2019.09.12 Lecture Notes 1:00 Lecture 3 – Stereostatics [ Hiroshi Teshigahara Film: Ch.19 – Colònia Güell Crypt ]

2019.09.12 Lecture Notes 1:00 Lecture 3 – StereoStatics [ Hiroshi Teshigahara film: ch.19 – Colònia Güell Crypt ] We have reached the moment in Gaudí’s work, that I find the most intriguing, the late 1890s or more precisely 1898, the year in which multiple factors aligned. Two of which define some of his greatest contributions to architecture, the first one equilibrated structure we will be dealing with today and the second, warped forms, we will discuss next week. Montserrat has been central to Catalan faith for centuries. It is a vital symbol of Catalan identity and independence. Every Catalan artist has respected its singular status – Picasso, Miró, Dalí. Catalan mythology believes the rocks of Montserrat formed by a geological explosion during the crucifixion of Christ. The Benedictine abbey (St. Maria de Montserrat Abbey) located on the mountain, enshrines the black Madonna (Virgin of Montserrat), the Patron Saint of Catalonia. The figure was taken to the mountain, to protect it from invading in Arab Muslims in Medieval times (718). Gaudí would take his builders to the mountain, to celebrate the completion of a project. In 1887, Gaudí accompanies Claudio, the Second Marqués de Comillas, on a diplomatic visit to Morocco, with economic and political significance for Spain. In connection with this trip, in 1892 he designed a project for a convent of Franciscan missionaries in Tangiers (1892-1893). The convent is set within a quatrefoil enclosure, with vertical towers. In the center a chapel in the shape of a Greek cross. An attempt to integrate African culture into Western civilization, in a mud structure. Just a couple years after he completed the Saint Teresa convent (1888-1890), Gaudí was eager to build a missionary convent of his own design, from its inception drawn from the sacred stones of Montserrat. But, it was never realized and became his biggest regret of his many projects left unfinished. He kept a drawing of this project hanging on the wall of his studio at Sagrada Familia. 1:10 “To obtain the largest space possible with the least amount of solid is certainly the problem that has had to be solved by every style of architecture, when it has been necessary to build for the public. The crowd did not enter the Greek temples, and the citizens of the small republics of Greece assembled only in unroofed enclosures. While the Romans were the first to construct buildings in which great numbers were able to assemble under cover, the Medieval builders, in working out a similar problem, endeavored to reduce as much as possible the quantity of masonry. The materials which they possessed did not however permit them to exceed a certain limit, since these large buildings had to be vaulted. As they were not able to employ wrought or cast iron of considerable dimensions, it was only by contrivances of masonry, a system of equilibrium of thrust and counterthrust, that they succeeded in erecting spacious buildings such as our great cathedrals. But we possess those appliances which were wanting to them. Iron allows feats of construction hitherto unattempted, provided that material is employed with due regard to its nature.” This is a passage from Viollet-le-Duc’s 2nd Lecture on Architecture, published in 1863. The Barcelona School of Architecture was strongly influenced by Viollet-le-Duc’s ideas and one of his biggest admirers was Gaudí’s teacher and mentor Juan Martorell y Montells, who was one of the most cultivated and travelled of the architects of his generation, his Neo-Gothicism derived not so much from the books of Viollet-le-Duc as from the actual buildings in the south of France. Gaudí learned much from Martorell, working in his office while in school and later receiving work from him, including a recommendation that Gaudí become the architect for the Sagrada Familia (1883). One of Viollet-le-Duc’s tenants was that “there is not a form or a process that is not produced by the necessity of the organism”. Gaudí continued this argument, by criticizing the use of buttresses as crutches. They could only be seen as evidence for the imperfection and weakness of the organism. In Gothic architecture, lateral thrusts were contained by the use of buttresses. 1:20 Gaudí saw such methods as an artificiality. He gathered justification for such reasoning by studying the growth of trees, the lean of trunks and the inclination of branches as they proportionally support and distribute forces and weights. Direct observation of natural laws formed a critical assessment of the weakness of the Gothic style. He said, “Have you ever observed that when someone leans on a cane, to do so he inclines it? Thus the inclined columns are stone canes in which, as anyone can see, the technique of following the lines and curves of pressures is even more refined.” It was a rule of respectable architecture that all load forces should be verticalized by the time they reached the ground. The inclined column suggested a measure of impermanence and insecurity. Tilting or propping may be satisfactory for the common lean-to or tent, but it was not within the etiquette of fine architecture. In Lecture 12, Viollet-le-Duc states “the use of rigid shafts or cast-iron columns as oblique supports is a means of which our builders have not yet thought, …substituting oblique for vertical resistance is a principle which…may assume a very high degree of importance.” A new architecture may be found by relying on such “novel principles of structure”. Gaudí working in brick and later stone, simply transferred Viollet-le-Duc’s idea for the oblique metal columns. Inspired by the construction methods of his homeland, the Catalan vault (the ‘volta d’escala’ and the ‘revoltó’), within this ancient vernacular tradition with origins found in the vaults of Mesopotamia and Egypt, Gaudí derived the use of the parabolic arch. Gaudí said, “the board vault (bóvedas tabicadas, in Catalan) is the most precious element of our construction, it permits us to execute with simplicity and rapidity the most complex forms, it does not require falsework (while it is being built), and it has great resistance in relation to its lightness and to the simplicity of its components." 1:30 Referred to as a board, because the tiles (rajoles) of the vault acted as a cohesive unit, like a monolithic board. This was a result of the quick acting, high-strength mortar, bonding the tiles together to function like pot covers or a carriage spring exerting very little lateral thrust, as opposed to keystoned arches and vaults held together by compression. These broad and thin, lightweight terracotta tiles, laid in a zig-zag patchwork, alternating in successive laminations of two or three layers, without metal re-enforcing, beginning in the corners where the first tile can be attached on two sides, with the following tiles cantilevering out, also bonded on two sides to the tile alongside and the tile before it. In this way, these vaults could be laid continuously and without temporary scaffolding or supports (senza armature). The use of these brick vaults began as floor and roof structures, when traditional wood joists became scarce, resulting from increased construction and deforestation. Masonry bricks were easy to handle, could be made on site and unlike wood, able to span floors with a non-combustible material. The innovative method of constructing without temporary scaffolding was also a result of the scarcity, and therefore higher cost, of lumber. However the defining feature for Gaudí, was that these Catalan board vaults in section scribed an inverted catenary, the natural curve formed by a chain hanging by its ends. Not a geometrical curve, the parabolic catenary curve is a natural state of equilibrium, where the forces of gravity act evenly along its arc, thereby bringing the structure into a state of rest. Unlike the traditional post and beam structure, where the beam acting primarily in tension laterally transfers loading to the posts supporting it in compression vertically, the parabolic arch has a continuous transmission of the loads without division between the lateral and vertical. 1:40 And unique to the parabolic arch, differing from the Roman circular arch or the Gothic pointed arch, as the legs of the parabolic arch splay outward, they do not meet the ground in a 90 degree right-angle. Their inclined position naturally resists the lateral thrusts that needed diagonal buttresses to resist in circular and pointed arches. (Güell Bodegas, 1895-1899) And most importantly, it does so within the profile of the arch structure, the architectural form and structural engineering are unified as one, no distinction between the two, what Gaudí called the equilibrium principle. And as such, it stands on its own, naturally, like a tree. He said, “Creation works ceaselessly through man. But man does not create, he discovers. Those who seek out the laws of Nature as support for their new work collaborate with the Creator.” Gaudí was more than a Viollet-le-Duc Rationalist, for he was deeply religious and believed that material qualities of architecture must be the outer manifestations of a spiritual order. Intuitively, he found the presence of this order in the structures of nature, which he felt to be a direct reflection of God’s mind. The laws of nature were not those of physics, but were evidence of the Creator. And the parabola, with its beautiful economy of an Equilibrated Structure, was more than a correction of the imperfect Gothic pointed arch, it was a sacred symbol, to restore a purity that had been lost. [Gustave Eiffel was the first to use the parabolic arch in bridge design, with the bridge on the Douro, Portugal, 1875-77, followed by the Garabit bridge in France, 1880-84.] [The first appearance of the parabolic arch in architecture is in the Palau Güell, Barcelona (1885-89).] 1:50 From Gaudí’s very first structure, the factory (1883) for La Obrera Matarónense cooperative, he has been refining the parabola.

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